Chapter 571: White Zetsu Appears, Terrifying War Potential
Late at night, White Zetsu leisurely returned to the unit after delivering the intelligence, only to notice that Mugetsu and Minato still had not gone to sleep and were walking toward him.
"Yo, Lord Mugetsu, Lord Minato, you two aren't asleep either?" White Zetsu greeted them casually, without the slightest trace of panic.
He did not believe he had been exposed. His Impersonation Technique could even replicate chakra.
He was almost a perfect copy of Hiraga, aside from their different thoughts.
Smiling faintly, Mugetsu placed a hand on White Zetsu's shoulder and activated the sealing technique.
"Lord Mugetsu, what are you doing? I'm from the Hyuga Clan..."
At first, White Zetsu did not understand Mugetsu's intention. But the moment he felt a restraining force invade his body, his expression changed drastically. He immediately released chakra and tried to resist.
Bang!
Standing nearby, Minato struck in an instant. A punch infused with a large amount of chakra landed squarely on White Zetsu's body and directly forced him back into his original form.
Once White Zetsu could no longer resist, Mugetsu's sealing technique was completed, and the chakra within White Zetsu's body could no longer be mobilized.
"What kind of creature is this?" Minato frowned as he looked at White Zetsu, whose appearance was similar to a human's, yet entirely pure white.
After confirming that Hiraga had delivered the intelligence, they had first taken care of the other two spies.
Unexpectedly, the spies they had suspected of betraying Konoha were not human at all. They looked more like products of some biological experiment.
"Perhaps they're war creations developed by Iwagakure," Mugetsu replied casually.
Calling them war creations was not technically wrong. It just wasn't Iwagakure, nor even Madara Uchiha, but Ōtsutsuki Kaguya.
Minato nodded in agreement.
White Zetsu's strange appearance, coupled with the fact that there were multiple identical individuals, was enough to confirm that they were products of some laboratory. It could not possibly be a case of albino triplets.
"Judging from the current situation, they probably can't be mass produced. Otherwise, it would be far too terrifying," Minato said, imagining large numbers of White Zetsu infiltrating and assassinating targets, and he could not help shaking his head.
Before Mugetsu arrived, just a few White Zetsu had already thrown a thousand-man ninja force into severe disarray.
If there were hundreds of White Zetsu, the morale of Konoha's ninja army would probably collapse. If one out of every ten ninja might secretly be an assassin, who could endure that?
If there were truly too many of them, even Mugetsu would have difficulty dealing with it all.
If Mugetsu stayed on the battlefield, White Zetsu could strike at Konoha's rear. If Mugetsu remained in Konoha, White Zetsu could target the forces at the front.
Just thinking about it gave Minato a headache. What kind of absurd war weapon was this? It had been born for large-scale conflict.
"That should be the case. Otherwise, with such useful spies, Iwagakure would definitely have inserted even more of them," Mugetsu nodded.
White Zetsu could indeed be mass produced, but the current Madara likely did not have that capability, as he was already an old man on the verge of death.
At this stage, Madara was in a state where, if left alone, he would soon die on his own.
After imprisoning the three White Zetsu together and leaving two ninja behind to guard them, the rest, under the command of Jiraiya and Mugetsu, swiftly headed toward the designated gathering and rest point.
Jiraiya and the others badly wanted to interrogate White Zetsu, but time did not wait for anyone.
They had no spy inside the Iwa ninja force and could not determine what Iwagakure would do next.
Would they move immediately toward the rest point after their meeting, wait until daylight, or continue to play it safe and maintain the current situation?
The only thing Jiraiya and the others could do was prepare as thoroughly as possible and respond to all changes with constancy.
As long as they reached the gathering point first, then even if they failed to ambush the Iwa ninja force, Jiraiya's unit could still successfully rendezvous with the support force.
Under Mugetsu's instructions, the support unit had already reached the designated gathering point in advance and laid traps there.
If they could ambush the Iwa ninja force, that would naturally be ideal. But even if Iwagakure did not fall for it, once Jiraiya and Mugetsu's forces joined up, they could still continue the war normally.
After all, with Mugetsu's ability to sense malice, no more spies would infiltrate them. Under those conditions, never mind defeating Iwagakure outright, simply holding the border would not be difficult, and that alone would already satisfy Konoha's upper ranks.
Rushing at full speed, the support force and Konoha's Land of Grass force successfully joined up.
At that moment, Mugetsu still could not sense any Iwagakure ninja within his perception range.
Mugetsu and Jiraiya immediately inspected the traps and made a series of preparations for the ambush.
Normally, ambushing a ninja force was extremely difficult unless the plan was executed perfectly or the enemy lacked sensory ninja.
Mugetsu's plan this time was not especially ingenious. It merely relied on exploiting the information gap.
However, Konoha at present had another advantage it could fully use, the power of its sensory ninja.
Sensory ninja of different levels had different detection ranges, and Mugetsu, Minato, and Hyuga Hizashi from Mugetsu's unit were all top class in that regard.
The main forces retreated to a position outside the perception range of ordinary sensory ninja and hid there. Then Mugetsu and the others spread out to several key points, forming a sensory net. The moment the Iwa ninja force approached, they would discover it immediately.
Thus, as dawn arrived, Mugetsu and the others sensed the approach of the Iwa ninja force.
Minato used Flying Thunder God to transfer to Hyuga Hizashi's position and take him away.
Meanwhile, Mugetsu left behind a Shadow Clone disguised as a stone inside the forest at the rest point to gather intelligence.
A Shadow Clone could not maintain the chakra consumption of a transformation jutsu for long, but turning into something that required no chakra expenditure was no problem at all.
At last, once Mugetsu's Shadow Clone sensed that the Iwa ninja force had begun to relax, it dispelled itself, sending all of its memories back to the original body.
The instant Mugetsu received those memories, he wasted no time. After ordering the forces to attack, he personally led some jonin, while Minato led Jiraiya and his two teammates. The two of them simultaneously used Flying Thunder God to teleport into the rest point.
Boom!
Mugetsu and Minato each used chakra to trigger the explosive tag traps that had been planted beforehand. In an instant, the entire rest point erupted in a series of explosions, throwing the Iwa ninja force into complete chaos.
They had come to ambush the Konoha ninja, only to be ambushed themselves. They were blown apart without even seeing a single enemy. In a situation like that, even ninja found it difficult to stay calm.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!
Minato pulled ten Flying Thunder God kunai from his pouch and scattered them in every direction. Each time one passed an Iwagakure ninja, a flash of yellow light followed, and another life was taken.
"Fire Release: Fire Dragon Flame Bullet!"
Jiraiya did not summon any toads to assist him. He quickly formed hand seals and unleashed a torrent of fire toward the Iwagakure ninja in front of him.
The support force was still on its way, and the battlefield was packed with Iwagakure ninja. Summoning large toads would only complicate things. Summoning Fukasaku was also too early. So Jiraiya chose not to use the Summoning Technique at all and instead relied on his own ninjutsu.
"Fire Release: Great Fire Annihilation!"
Faced with such a dense cluster of enemies, Mugetsu made the same choice as Jiraiya and unleashed a large-scale, high-damage Fire Release.
Whoosh, whoosh!
Sheets of flame poured from Mugetsu's mouth. In an instant, a blazing sea of fire spread around him, far larger in range than Jiraiya's Fire Dragon Flame Bullet.
"Water Release: Water Formation Wall!"
Some of the Iwagakure ninja who were skilled in Water Release attempted to stop Mugetsu's flames with defensive ninjutsu.
But even the restrained version of Great Fire Annihilation that Mugetsu had used was not something ordinary Iwagakure ninja could block.
The streams of water they spat out were rapidly evaporated, and any ninja caught by the sea of fire was reduced to ash beneath the furnace-like heat.
The Iwagakure ninja near the flames all showed looks of terror, desperately using every method they had to resist, yet most of that resistance was meaningless.
"That Fire Release..." Jiraiya looked somewhat surprised.
Purely in terms of power, Great Fire Annihilation was not enough to astonish him. He himself had many powerful Fire Release techniques.
The real issue was that Great Fire Annihilation was a high-level Fire Release of the Uchiha Clan.
Jiraiya quickly dismissed the thought. It was merely a Fire Release technique, not some secret forbidden art. If Mugetsu wanted it, whether from the Uchiha or from Hiruzen, he could most likely obtain it.
"Cunning, damnable Konoha ninja!" Iwakura's face darkened.
"Water Release: Great Waterfall Technique!"
Seeing the situation, Roshi rapidly formed hand seals and spewed out a massive torrent of water to counter the flames.
Although Roshi's Water Release was only average by itself, the amplification of Tailed Beast chakra made his Great Waterfall Technique exceptionally powerful. While it did not completely extinguish the flames, it still saved quite a few Iwagakure ninja.
"No wonder we keep losing battles. With fools like you in command, it would be strange if we didn't," Roshi said coldly, his expression dark after nearly being caught in the explosion traps himself.
At the war council, these people had mocked Jiraiya's incompetence and sneered at Mugetsu's foolishness, acting as if Konoha had already been forced to surrender territory and pay reparations.
Yet in reality, they had marched for hours through the middle of the night without sleep, only to be blown apart by explosive tags the moment they tried to rest.
Iwakura heard Roshi's words, but pretended not to. Instead, he ordered the Explosion Corps ninja nearest to him to gather around him.
A jinchūriki held a special status, and one like Roshi, who could fully transform into a Tailed Beast, was more special still. Even Ōnoki, the Tsuchikage, had clashed with Roshi before. There was no way Iwakura, vice captain of the Explosion Corps, could really suppress him.
"Spread out, quickly! The number of Konoha ninja here is very small!" Iwakura shouted.
He had been watching carefully. Although the entire rest point looked like it had descended into chaos, most of that chaos had come from the traps themselves. The actual Konoha ninja who had appeared so far did not even number ten.
If they stayed too tightly packed, the Iwa ninja force would not even be able to use its own ninjutsu properly. One careless move and they might wipe out their own men.
There were nearly two thousand Iwagakure ninja here.
As he shouted orders, Iwakura also kept retreating toward the rear.
Though only a handful of Konoha ninja had shown themselves, Iwakura now viewed all of the intelligence with suspicion. That so-called intelligence had clearly been a trap set by Konoha.
It was entirely possible that Konoha's Land of Grass force had already rendezvoused with its support unit, and that an enemy army not much smaller than theirs was hidden nearby.
The moment that thought crossed his mind, Iwakura felt an urge to withdraw.
It was true that they still held the numerical advantage. But some of their men had already died to the traps, and the entire force had marched through the night. A large portion of the Iwagakure ninja were far from their best condition. If they fought Konoha head on now, victory was not guaranteed.
"We've fallen into Konoha's trap. Retreat at once!" Iwakura shouted loudly.
Originally, he had wanted to fight for a while before issuing such an order. If he ordered a retreat the moment a few Konoha ninja appeared, it would make him look far too cowardly in the future.
But he was also afraid that if he delayed retreating, the situation might spiral out of control and cost Iwagakure a huge amount of its active strength.
Compared to that possibility, losing some face was a trivial matter.
"Minato, transfer me to another location," Jiraiya said at once as he saw the Iwa ninja force trying to break out.
Their own main force was still on the way. They could not let the Iwa ninja escape this early.
Minato immediately understood. He grabbed Jiraiya's shoulder and used Flying Thunder God to transfer to the direction where the Iwa ninja were retreating.
They had prepared for this in advance. Both Mugetsu and Minato had buried large numbers of Flying Thunder God kunai around the surrounding area.
"Summoning Technique!"
Bang!
A cloud of white smoke erupted, and two enormous toads descended from the sky, crashing heavily into the Iwa ninja force.
"The intensity of the recent battles is getting ridiculous," Gamabunta muttered as he looked at the thousands of Iwagakure ninja around him.
It was either holding back a jinchūriki or facing off against an army of a thousand.
"Although I am clumsy, I will do my best to stop them," Gamaken said in his deep voice.
"Sorry, you two. I'll need you to bear with it for a while," Jiraiya said apologetically.
In a battle like this, the bigger the body, the more likely it was to become a target. But at the moment, he had no better way to block the Iwa ninja from withdrawing.
"Earth Release: Rock Iron Cannon Technique!"
Without even needing an order, the Iwagakure ninja immediately began using one of the legion-style techniques they specialized in.
In an instant, a massive number of cannonball-like stones were launched toward Gamabunta and Gamaken.
"Water Release: Teppodama!"
Gamabunta retaliated without hesitation, spitting out Sage Water Release.
Its destructive power was immense, and any stone struck by it was destroyed immediately. But there were simply too many Iwagakure ninja, and too many attacks were coming in at once.
The concentrated barrage was so fierce that even Gamabunta, despite his tough hide and chakra defenses, soon suffered numerous injuries.
Gamaken fared slightly better because of the shield on his back, but the shield could not protect his entire body, so he too was wounded.
With their strength, trying to block a thousand-man ninja force was truly asking too much.
"Those damned toads again," Roshi muttered with a grim expression.
There were too many Iwagakure ninja around. Forget firing a Tailed Beast Ball. Roshi could not even safely transform completely, because one careless movement might crush his own people.
"Roshi, you deal with the shield one. I'll take care of the other. We need to remove them as quickly as possible," Han said, rapidly condensing Lava Release chakra.
Even though he was furious, Roshi's mind remained clear. Since they had already fallen into a trap, retreat was unquestionably the best choice, and the sooner they escaped, the better.
Who knew what else in that intelligence was false? For example, was Konoha's support unit really only one thousand strong? Could it actually be even larger?
Roshi gave a brief nod, and dark red Tailed Beast chakra burst from his body, cloaking him as he prepared to use his most effective technique, a single overwhelming strike to knock out Gamaken.
But just as Roshi entered his Lava Release chakra mode and was about to charge toward Gamabunta, a sharp sense of danger struck him.
He stopped instantly.
The very next moment, a spear of water pierced into the ground in front of him.
.....
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